President Should Act Quickly To Dispel Cloud Of Brown Case

Just as the president has reached "the top of his game" -- to use Time magazine's words -- he has had to defend the ethics of his commerce secretary, Ronald H. Brown.

Controversies over accusations of ethical lapses, it seems, have become a permanent part of the Washington landscape.

Just this week, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, was charged with misconduct in her former job as Texas state treasurer. And Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich., whose reputation was tarnished by accepting favors from Charles Keating, the disgraced savings and loan bigwig, announced he will not seek re-election next year.

More importantly, Brown made front page news when he changed his story about his association with a Vietnamese businessman whose dealings are under investigation by a federal grand jury in Florida.

The grand jury is trying to determine whether there is any truth in allegations that Brown agreed to work toward lifting the U.S. trade embargo on Vietnam in exchange for $700,000 in a Singapore bank account. Clinton recently modified the embargo but left it largely in place.

Brown says there is nothing to the allegations, but it's not as simple as that. Indeed, nothing about the episode is simple.

Take Brown himself. After growing up in Harlem, his early work brought him to Washington, where in 1981 he joined Patton, Boggs & Blow, one of the city's most prominent legal and lobbying firms. In his last full year as a partner at the firm he earned $580,000, plus $90,000 as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Brown's lobbying work included representing former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and the U.S. subsidiaries of Japanese electronics companies. Thus, he seemed a strange Cabinet selection after Clinton ran on a populist theme, decrying the influence of money and lobbyists in Washington.

Brown's confirmation hearings were laced with pointed questions about possible conflicts of interest because of his extensive foreign business dealings. Questions about Vietnam did not come up

until later, and Brown's office then issued a carefully crafted statement that seemed more definitive than it was.

"The secretary categorically and unequivocally denies he has ever had any business or professional relationship with any Vietnamese individual, organization or group, or any person claiming to represent Vietnamese government or business interests," the statement said.

Still, the issue would not go away, and this week Brown's attorney, Reid H. Weingarten, told a different story.

Brown had met three times since November with Nguyen Van Hao, a former Vietnamese government official identified as the key figure in the alleged attempt to buy Brown's help in lifting the trade embargo, Weingarten said. The final meeting took place in February in Brown's Commerce Department office.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Brown attempted to explain away the contradiction. "I never said whether I did or didn't [attend meetings with Hao] and I don't want to go beyond that. ... I've met with a lot of people. It's not an issue," Brown said.

Well, it certainly is an issue, given Brown's initial statement. The contradiction already has prompted a call for a special prosecutor by conservative House Republicans, who think they have picked up the trail of a Democratic political scandal.

But how strange it is to hear Republicans call for a special prosecutor. For years, Republicans have complained about the lack of limits on the authority of special prosecutors and the time they can consume pursuing their investigations. They have a point, because Lawrence Walsh, special prosecutor in the 1987 Iran-contra scandal, has yet to close his shop.

Even if some Republicans have been hypocritical, Democrats can hardly claim the moral high ground. Attorney General Janet Reno and at least one senior House committee chairman have declined to act, citing technicalities. But it's hard to believe Democrats would stand idly by if they thought they could embarrass a high-ranking Republican.

Wishing Brown's situation away, though, ill serves the president. Somewhere, misguided souls may be thinking that the best way of sidetracking Brown's case is to leave it with overworked Florida officials.

They're wrong. Allegations of high-level misdeeds have a way of taking on a life of their own. To dispose of this case quickly and surely, Clinton should insist that a prestigious outsider take over the investigation. He'll be better off in the long run. So will Brown, if his story holds up.

The writer is the senior correspondent in The Courant's Washington bureau